Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates generally to ultrasonic transducers, and more particularly, to a system and method for driving ultrasonic transducers and improvements to a phase track controller for reducing loss of lock occurrence.
Background of the Disclosure
Ultrasonic transducers have been in use for many years. Current technology typically depends on resonant circuits to drive ultrasonic transducers. Resonant circuits are, by definition, designed to operate in a very narrow range of frequencies. Because of that, the transducer tolerances are held very tightly to be able to operate with the driving circuitry which results in higher costing circuits. In addition, there is no possibility of using the same driving circuit for transducers with different frequencies because of the static nature of typical drivers, and the circuit must be changed for every transducer frequency. There is also a need for a system and method for driving any transducer regardless of the resonant frequency of the transducer.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,115,366 B2 describes a linear phase track controller which can accurately generate a wide range of frequencies and is capable of individually driving multiple transducers with different resonant frequencies.
A disadvantage of a linear phase track controller occurs when it is no longer able to track the output phase, due to noise or some other perturbation in the system. This condition is called loss of lock. This disclosure describes an enhancement to a linear phase track controller which greatly reduces loss of lock occurrences.
The features and advantages of the disclosure will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by the practice of the disclosure without undue experimentation. The features and advantages of the disclosure may be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out herein.